Pick two points on an interactive world map and see the distance between them in km, miles, and travel time. Free, fast, and runs in your browser.
The interactive map lets you click any two points on Earth and immediately see the great-circle distance between them, along with estimated flight and driving times. It is ideal for visual planners who prefer maps over typing city names.
All calculations run locally in your browser using the Haversine formula, with coordinates resolved from OpenStreetMap data. Nothing about your selections is stored on a server.
Combine the map with the calculator and route hubs for a complete picture of how distances connect cities, regions, and continents.
Method & Limitations
SnapDistance reports great-circle distance — the shortest path over the surface of the Earth — and derives travel-time estimates from it. Here is exactly how each number is produced, and where it stops being reliable.
How the numbers are calculated
Distance: the Haversine formula on a sphere with radius 6,371 km, applied to the latitude and longitude of each location.
Coordinates: supplied by OpenStreetMap contributors via the Photon geocoder.
Miles and nautical miles: converted from kilometres (1 km = 0.621371 mi = 0.539957 nmi).
Flight time: great-circle distance divided by a cruise speed of 800 km/h, plus 30 minutes for taxi, takeoff and landing.
Road distance (only where an ordinary road route is plausible): a rough estimate — great-circle distance multiplied by 1.3, a typical road-network detour factor. It is not live routing.
Driving time (where a road estimate is shown): that rough road distance divided by an average speed of 80 km/h.
All calculations run in your browser. The city pair you enter is never sent to a SnapDistance server.
Known limitations
The Earth is an ellipsoid, not a perfect sphere. Haversine results can differ from geodesic (WGS-84) distance by up to roughly 0.5%.
Each city is a single reference point — normally the city centre, not a specific airport, station or street address.
Real flight paths are typically 2–10% longer than the great circle because of air-traffic routing, weather and jet streams.
Flight and driving times are planning estimates. They exclude traffic, borders, ferries, layovers, check-in and connections.
Driving figures are meaningless where no continuous road link exists, such as between continents; SnapDistance hides them on those routes.
SnapDistance carries no live schedules, fares or seat availability. Confirm with an airline, rail operator or routing service before booking.